RIAA Fails to Take Down Pirate Bay Domain, For Now

The RIAA has sent a formal letter to the Public Interest Registry, asking it to suspend Pirate Bay's .ORG domain. The registry hasn't complied with the request but has forwarded it to Pirate Bay's registrar EasyDNS who insist the domain will stay up. So the question now is will the RIAA take the matter to court?

Earlier today we wrote about the Copyright Alliance’s critique of the US-based Public Interest Registry (PIR), which is responsible for .ORG domains.

The group called out the registry as hypocritical, as it allows “criminal” sites such as The Pirate Bay to use its service. A few hours later it turns out that this criticism didn’t come out of nowhere.

The Pirate Bay’s registrar EasyDNSreveals that the RIAA sent PIR a letter last week, urging it to suspend the Pirate Bay’s domain.

The music group lists several European court decisions against The Pirate Bay, including the criminal convictions of its founders in Sweden. It states that the torrent site is clearly operating illegally, and hopes the registry will take its domain name out of circulation.

According to the RIAA, The Pirate Bay violates PIR’s anti-abuse policy and terms of service. As such, it hopes that a court order isn’t required for the registry to take action.

“When, as in this case, there is overwhelming evidence of infringing and abusive activity on a domain, along with court orders from several jurisdictions with well-developed copyright jurisprudence, it cannot be the ‘right thing’ or ‘in the community interest’ to hold out for those decisions to be processed before the U.S. courts before taking action,” the RIAA writes.

RIAA’s letter to the Public Interest Registry

The RIAA’s letter was sent last week and thus far PIR has not taken any steps against the domain. Instead, it forwarded the RIAA’s letter to Pirate Bay’s registrar, the Canadian-based EasyDNS.

TorrentFreak spoke with EasyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic, who informs us that he doesn’t want to be seen as a refuge for torrent sites. However, he is committed to protecting due process, and for now he sees no reason to suspend the domain name.

EasyDNS forwarded the letter to TPB and intriguingly, the site’s operator replied that they are DMCA compliant. In addition, they waved away any concerns about malware that was distributed through third-party ads.

Infringements or not, EasyDNS says its abuse policy only covers net abuse, not copyright matters. This means that in order to get a domain suspended the RIAA would need to present a local court order, or a foreign one that’s served through the Ontario Sheriff’s Office.

“We would need some kind of legal finding here in Ontario, or a foreign legal finding that has been duly served to us via the Ontario Sheriff’s Office,” Jeftovic tells us.

Alternatively, EasyDNS says it will accept the outcome of a formal proceeding under ICANN’s rules and regulations. However, it won’t take action against a one-sided complaint.

All in all, this means that the RIAA’s letter is unlikely to achieve the result they desire. This also begs the question, what’s next?

Although the RIAA would prefer to avoid a legal case against The Pirate Bay in the United States, if only to avoid the media attention, it appears that they have few other options left than to go to court.

Court case or not, the TPB team isn’t worried. They are not tied to the .ORG domain and can easily switch to an alternative.

“TPB is more than just a domain, it’s a movement, and taking down one domain will have zero effect on our inalienable right to share culture with our peers,” TPB’s Spud17 told us earlier today.